Murder suspect recites Hamlet in film

ROME (Reuters) - American exchange student Amanda Knox, perhaps the most famous murder suspect in Italy, is featured in a prison movie reciting the famous "To be, or not to be" speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the director told Reuters.

The movie -- which has yet to be publicly screened -- features 12 female inmates including the 21-year-old Knox, who has been held in jail for over a year over the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in the university town of Perugia.

"This is one of the cultural activities that inmates get to do," said the director of the publicly-financed film, Claudio Carini, who in the past has also directed theater productions for female inmates.

Prosecutors say Knox, her boyfriend and a third suspect fatally stabbed Kercher in the neck in November last year after trying to force her into joining an orgy. The case has riveted Italians and received wide cover in British and American media.

The suspects all deny wrongdoing.

Carini estimated that Knox, a former student at University of Washington in Seattle, is on screen for just under 5 minutes of the 55-minute production, which he described as a non-linear "fantasy" film about the life of inmates.

During that time, Knox acts in both Italian and English, reciting the famous speech from Hamlet in which Shakespeare's character contemplates the pains of life and his fear of death.

"She does the 'to be or not to be' (speech)," Carini said.

The film, which could premiere next month, also features other foreign inmates, including jailed women from Eastern Europe and South America, and some Italians, he said.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, editing by Paul Casciato)